


kisses like the stars

by twistedsky



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-25
Updated: 2012-09-25
Packaged: 2017-11-15 01:11:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/521495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedsky/pseuds/twistedsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sheriff Stilinski and Alan Deaton have a history(and a future). Veers off pretty intensely from canon. Mentions of Danny/Stiles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	kisses like the stars

**Author's Note:**

> Not every question comes with answers. Minor mentions of homophobia, but not really.

Sheriff John Stilinski is a tired man, who remembers what it was like to be young, but is simply no longer capable of such freedom, of feeling much of anything for the very first time, of falling in love.

Now, he is old.

He knows that most apologies never come, and if they do they often come too late. He knows cruelty more than kindness, knows what people are capable better than anything—knows of rage, desperation, pain—he knows what it feels like to lose your soulmate, your wife and the mother of your child, watch a friend bruised and battered throw her husband out for the last time.

He knows what it’s like to stare into the eyes of men and women capable of  _evil_ , but who feel no shame, no regret—sometimes sick joy, or nothing at all.

He is worn, he is tired, he is embittered and broken-hearted, and not only does he not have the spirit of the young, he lacks the heart.

Love is for the young, they say, and it feels true.

Later, it’s wrong.

~~

It begins in high school, when he’s sixteen and he has the rest of his life head of him, and it doesn’t seem daunting or terrifying at all—it feels liberating.

When he meets Lena, he doesn’t feel fireworks, he feels  _home_.

She becomes his best friend—his rock, his everything, his sanity in the storm, whatever cliché or overwrought metaphor helps you to understand.

When John Stilinski meets Lena James, he doesn’t fall in love, but he falls in like, and that’s enough to make them  _friends_. John has never been one to make friends easily, so she becomes his lifeline(especially once life comes and he’s desperately in need of one, but that comes later, don’t fret).

The world does not shake, does not shudder, does not shift—not until the first day of junior year, that is, when everything changes.

In actuality, when John Stilinski meets Alan Deaton, he doesn’t immediately know why he’s immediately sure that he needs to be this boy’s friend, or why he feels  _alive_ , immediately, like there’s electricity in his body, flowing through his veins.

If John were a romantic(which he isn’t, he’s a pragmatist), he’d say that it’s  _fate_  that they become lab partners—later, he’d call it some sort of curse, but he isn’t, so he doesn’t. Lena does, of course, because  _she_  is a romantic, in every sense of the world, but in the most practical sort of way—“It’s coincidence at you met, fate that you became lab partners—“ and she’ll trail off before finishing with “—everything else is  _you.”_

John is the sheriff’s boy, so he keeps out of trouble, doesn’t party like everyone else, but when Alan shows up to his house with a 6-pack of beer for ‘after’ they’re done with their lab assignment, he doesn’t say no.

From there it’s a long way to fall, and when he does, he does it fast and so intensely that when he hits the bottom it nearly breaks him.

~~

“Your taste in music is absolute crap,” Alan tells him one day, while they lounge around in the forest, staring up at the sky, higher than a kite. And, John thinks, giggling slightly to himself, he’s a master kite flier.

“What makes you say that?”

“I don’t know,” Alan admits. “It just came to me, like in a dream.” He lifts out his hand, as if to frame his words, “John Stilinski’s taste in music is absolute crap.”

John snorts and almost chokes, because it’s  _so funny_ he can’t breathe.

Alan lifts him up, fumbling a lot, and fails to stop John’s laughter, so he stops and joins in.

John stops laughing, finally, and the laughter dies, falling away—leaving quiet that he’s decidedly uncomfortable with.

He and Alan are practically wrapped up in each other, because Alan’s arm is around him, and they’re mere inches apart.

The moment passes though, because it suddenly starts to rain.

John curses, Alan laughs, and they run for cover.

~~

Alan is  _deep_ , John discovers. Much deeper than himself, because John doesn’t think about much more than daily life, and the future—but Alan thinks about destiny, and adventures, and  _life_.

He wants to be a doctor, he says, but his dad thinks he should take over the family business. All he wants to do is help people, he says, and for the first time John thinks this of himself too—he wants to improve the world, if only in the tiniest ways.

“Do you think there’s life after death?” Alan asks one day, and John bites his lip, because the good Christian answer is yes, of course, but—he sighs.

“No,” he admits. “I don’t think there’s much of anything.”

Alan turns to him on the couch and scrunches his nose tightly, “Then what’s the point?”

“Life, I guess.” John shrugs.

Alan is quiet, and John tilts his head to the side in askance.

It’s weird, of course, because when Alan looks at him like that—well, John feels deep too.

It’s a good feeling until later when it almost breaks him.

~~

“You and Alan are getting close,” Lena says, leaning against the locker next to his. “I feel like I never see you anymore.”

“We’re friends,” John says quickly, and it feels incredibly strange because it  _feels_  like a lie, which it shouldn’t, right?

Lena lifts an eyebrow. “What else would you be?” she snorts. “Arch nemeses?”

John smiles tightly, shoving his locker closed. “Exactly.”

~~

John starts to become uncomfortable around Alan, for reasons he can’t quite explain.

He’s a little too aware of when Alan is around him—it’s like he can  _feel_  him, and it’s unnatural, and the scariest part is that it feels  _right_  and  _good_ , and John doesn’t—John doesn’t understand.

In theory he imagines what it could mean—he knows he’s attracted to women, but  _never_  like Alan.

It’s terrifying.

He’s not supposed to feel this way, and if Alan found out, he’d probably kick his ass or something. He knows how people are, and he knows how the slightest wind of something like this can ruin your entire life, and that’s not going to happen to him—not even for Alan Deaton, not even for the boy who makes him feel alive, who inspires him, who makes him think that all his dreams can come true.

It’s only been two months since they met, and they’re already spending too much time together, and John feels like his entire life has changed.

~~

Alan kisses him for the first time on a rainy day in November, and John’s center of gravity shifts.

He comes over to study on a Thursday afternoon, and it’s raining so intensely John is almost worried he won’t show up at all, but he does.

He shows up wet, and John immediately forgets any awkwardness and focuses on getting Alan warmed up.

“You’re such a mother hen,” Alan teases.

John smiles slightly. “It’s in my nature.”

“It’s cute,” Alan responds cheekily, and John is sure he’s blushing, but his room is dark, so hopefully Alan won’t notice even if he’s as red as a tomato.

John hands Alan a pair of gym shorts and a t-shirt, and Alan starts to take his shirt off.

Guys do that, he reminds himself, averting his eyes, but trying not to make too big of a deal out of it.

It’s minutes later, when Alan plops himself down on John’s bed, and John awkwardly sits next to him, leaning back against his headboard, when things get really awkward.

But then Alan starts talking, and John’s nervous energy disperses, and everything feels comfortable and perfect, and exactly the way that should make him most nervous.

Alan is suggesting that he paint his ceiling, because it’s  _boring_ , when John laughs and Alan just looks at him, as if stunned, and John stops laughing—and suddenly Alan presses his lips to John’s, and his hands are in John’s hair, and they both can't breathe.

“You taste like peppermint," Alan says when he pulls away for air.

“You taste like rain,” John says with a laugh, though he really thinks he tastes like  _dreams._

He’s the pragmatist, he reminds himself, but he lets himself kiss Alan Deaton again, even though his heart is already aching.

~~

Days bleed into each other, and his grades are fine, and Lena is still teasing him about how much time he spends with Alan, but no one  _knows._

It’s just the two of them, and it’s nice.

It’s interesting maneuvering around another person’s body—tracing every line and curve of their body into your memory, as if you’re afraid to forget, and afraid you will one day have to.

The slide from kissing to more  _physical_  acts is natural, and strangely not nerve-wracking at all.

It’s the most natural thing in the world to touch each other,  _be_  with each other.

John feels powerful, indestructible, unbeatable.

They fall in love.

~~

They start to make plans, months in.

There are whispered  _I love yous_  against each other’s skin, and John can’t even tell you who says it first, or when, because it all seems to bleed together.

They plan to go to college together, to  _be_  together.

They’ll worry about the world later, they say.

They’ll travel one day, they’ll have adventures.

John paints stars on the ceiling above his bed just to see Alan’s smile when he notices, and Alan leaves marks on his skin, right out of sight, but dark enough to  _feel._

~~

John tells Lena one day, and while her eyes nearly pop out of her skull, and jumps and hugs him. “I’m happy for you,” she whispers softly. “You deserve to be happy.”

~~

The day they graduate from high school—nearly two years after meeting that fateful day in chemistry class—they make love under the bleachers in the gym, just because they can.

Alan disappears for a week after that, to visit his grandmother, and it’s the longest week of John’s life up to that point.

When he comes back, he’s different, and John can feel it, but he ignores it, pressing a kiss to Alan’s throat and letting sex distract his mind.

~~

“No one would ever be able to look you in the eyes if they found out.” Alan says this one day, after he’s back from his grandmother’s house, and he’s sleepily spooning John.

“I don’t care.” He doesn’t, not really. Not anymore.

“I do,” Alan says softly, when John’s already fallen asleep in his arms. It’s better that he not know.

~~

One week later, the other shoe drops.

“I don’t think we should do this anymore.” It’s sudden, almost of nowhere. One moment they’re having lunch, and then the next it’s  _over._

“Do what, exactly?” John asks, and he can’t help his panicked tone of voice. “Eat?” He's felt the difference, he's been waiting for this moment(and terrified that it would come).

“You know what I mean,” Alan says softly.

“You don’t think we should be  _us_  anymore,” John says, and he feels hysterical for the first time in his life, no this is not happening, this is not okay, this is  _not okay._

Alan is silent. He nods, slightly, and John swears it feels like his heart is actually breaking physically, because there’s such  _pain_  in his chest, and he can’t  _breathe._

“Why are you doing this? There has to be a reason. You wouldn’t just—“

“John—I don’t want to do this anymore.”

This is the moment Alan walks away, and while John  _does_  try to stop him, Alan shakes his head and says, “I don’t want to see you again.”

There’s a slight hiccup as he says it.

“You’re lying,” John says, because it feels wrong, and it feels like a lie.

Alan takes him by the shoulders and looks into his eyes, “I don’t love you.”

Alan leaves, and John falls to pieces.

~~

It should be noted that John does not fall right into bed with someone else.

He spends two weeks trying to get Alan to talk to him, but it doesn’t work—and then one day John goes to his house, and his father tells him that he’s gone.

And he’s not coming back.  
  
It's destroying him, in so many ways--and he's sure he knew this would happen, because how could it not? But somehow he'd never stopped it, and now it's too late, and he's sadder than he's ever been.

John gets his hands on a bottle of whiskey and curls up in bed, thankful for the summer.

Two years of his life, he thinks, reduced to simple words, and a goodbye that feels like a bullet wound to the chest, and a sad teenager drinking by himself—at least until Lena shows up, ever the good best friend, with food and some board game they don’t even end up playing.

Instead, they get drunk—John has a head start, and Lena is a lightweight, so it hits them fast and hard, and suddenly they’re blacking out.

~~

Five months later, John and Lena get married, and become Mr. and Mrs. Stilinski.

John gives up his dreams of college, and instead plans to join the police academy one day soon, and he  _plans._ Dreams are for children, he thinks.

Lena is pregnant.

The day of their wedding, John is desperately trying to tie his tie, and it’s not working and he just can’t  _do_  it, damn, when he hears a voice behind him and he turns to see Alan, who is the last person he wants to see, and the only person he wants to see, and he feels a sudden wave of self-loathing.

“You look good.”

“I’m getting married.” John is struck silent when Alan steps forward, and fixes his tie for him.

“I made a mistake,” Alan says finally, and John laughs bitterly, because isn’t that the truth?

“Good for you,” John says. “I’m getting married.”

“You don’t have to—“

“I do, I really do. And you don’t get to have an opinion, because you left, and took a piece of me with you, and I don’t want that part of me anymore, okay? I need you to  _leave.”_

Alan nods, because he understands, and it seems so maddening,and suddenly John isn’t just hurt he’s furious and about to cry, and he feels so fucking broken he’s  _shaking._

Alan turns to leave, but John grabs his arm, pulling him back around and kissing him hard on the mouth, and he loses himself in pent up emotion that he can’t express, he can’t  _feel_  if he’s going to go out there and marry Lena, and have a  _family_  with her.

John pulls away. “Goodbye, Alan.” He steps to grab his suitjacket, putting it on before heading towards his future.

“Hey—“ Alan calls out, and John turns back, just for a moment. “I love you. I always did.”

John smiles, sadly. “Oh, I always knew that. I just couldn’t believe you’d lie to me like that.”

He leaves then, and doesn’t set eyes on Alan Deaton for fifteen years—he doesn’t know where Alan goes, and he doesn’t really want to, because he’s not sure he has it in him to resist following him  _every_  day.

~~

The day they lose the baby is particularly hard.

John doesn’t know what goes wrong, but he knows from the look on Lena’s face that it’s never going to be okay again.

He holds her when she cries, and he’s sure a part of him is dead.

They almost break up in the first year, but somehow they can’t, as if they need each other to heal, because no one else understands what it’s like to lose a child you’ve restructured your entire life around.

A few years after they lose the baby, they’re peaceful and calm, married to the idea that they’re  _good_  together, when they find out they’re pregnant again.

John kisses away Lena’s tears, ignoring his own, and everything falls into place.

~~

John follows in his father’s footsteps—working hard to provide for his family, to set up a life that he can live, that he can give to his wife and his baby boy.

They name him after his grandfather, and John’s father smiles at him for the first time in months, and John feels everything slip into place.

Lena is beautiful, and kind, and an amazing mother—she’s his best friend, and his  _partner_ , and they slip seamlessly into a comfortable, kind, soft,  _healing_  sort of love.

It’s easy to forget the past when he sees the future written on his son’s face, and in his wife’s eyes.

It’s easy to stop dreaming of leaving Beacon Hills, to become a cop, to become a deputy, and when his father dies, to become sheriff.

It’s easy to lose himself in his labels—he’s a father, a husband, the town sheriff, and there’s not much else to need, to live for, to feel, to  _want._

Sometimes he lets himself remember a boy with a lips that taste like the stars, and a smile that makes his stomach ache and dance, and a heart that pairs simply, easily, with his own.

He doesn’t think long or hard about it, of course, because such memories are for the past.

_You make your own destiny,_  he thinks.

~~

Sometimes, when he looks at Lena, he loves her like he should.

Sometimes, however, he doesn’t, and he hates himself for it.

The worst part is, he thinks, that she deserves to fall in love so intensely she can't breathe.

He tells her this once, while she sits with their baby boy in her arms and she shakes her head and smiles.

“I prefer this love, John. I’ve seen what the other kind does to people, yourself included. And, well,” she looks down at the child in her arms. “I’m in love with this little fellow,” her smile somehow turns  _sad_ , “and that’s all that matters. This is all the love I need.”

~~

Stiles is excitable and sweet, funny and fast-talking, and exhausting to care for at times, but Lena does it with ease, where John becomes frustrated.

He makes friends at the age of five in kindergarten with Scott McCall, and they’re inseparable. Melissa McCall is a lovely woman, with a dick of a husband who John throws in jail more than a few times for disorderly conduct and drunken disturbances.

It’s so  _suburban_ , he thinks.

This is his life now. He accepts it fully, without regrets, because sometimes Stiles looks at him like he’s a superhero, and it makes him feel like one.

~~

He notices.

He notices when Lena seems  _tired_ , when it’s not just about taking care of Stiles, who is practically fullgrown now(he’s  _nine and three quarters_ he says), when no matter how much he tries to get her to sleep and eat and rest she doesn’t get better.

She dies on a Tuesday, six months after the symptoms appear, and the last part of him that’s okay dies with her.

Stiles gets panic attacks. John can’t sleep. They’re a mess of a family, and John discovers he’s failed in the only way he’d ever hoped he wouldn’t.

~~

It’s hard after that. John buries himself in his work, and he drinks himself to sleep half the time.

It stays this way—he’s suspended in time, in reality, for close to a year.

~~

It begins anew, simply enough, because Sheriff John Stilinski is a nice person, and a good boss.  
  
It begins when one of his deputies picks up a sweet looking dog that some asshole half ran over, and John offers to take her to the local vet, so that the deputy can get home to his pregnant wife.  
  
John remembers how that used to feel. Having someone to go home to--at least other than a kid, and an empty space in your life, and the kind of sadness that doesn't want to ever let up.  
  
It's late--too late, really, when he stops by the clinic, and he's thankful to discover that someone is there, finishing up some sort of paperwork, it seems, from the look of things.

He’s relieved until he recognizes him. “Oh—“ He came back, John thinks, dazed.

Alan’s eyes go wide, but then he simply takes a look at the collie.  
  
John forces himself to smile back when Deaton offers up a smile of his own, and starts to examine the dog.  
  
"You can go home, Sheriff--" Alan says.  
  
"I really should stay to make sure he's okay, Doctor." They were once so close, and now they can’t even call each other by their given names, John thinks, and it aches inside of him, in some part of his heart he thought was long dead.  
  
"Okay, it'll take her a little while to heal, but I think she'll be fine,"Alan softly pets the collie, and John sighs.  
  
"Thank you."  
  
There's an awkward silence then, and Alan looks back up at him, and John suddenly realizes how much older they both look. They haven't aged well, he thinks. Life is to blame.  
  
He's beginning to think of what might not have changed, when suddenly it's too quiet, and they're staring at each other, and it's   
 _awkward._

He misses the days--no, no, he doesn't. He does not miss the days when things were less awkward between them, because he doesn't want Alan to be here, in Beacon Hills. It hurts too much, and John is tired of hurt.  
  
“I thought you wanted to be a doctor,” he says awkwardly, disliking the silence.

“I’ve found I prefer animals to humans—much less chance of mistakes—“ Alan replies, and the words are rife with meaning, but John does not read into them.

He knows, already, what Alan is saying.

~~  
  
John goes out of his way to avoid running into Alan after this--he has an eleven year old at home, he tells himself, he should spend more time with his son.  
  
It's difficult to see him now--to know that Alan is openly gay and  _dating_ , and that he's back in town, and it’s killing John slowly but surely.

One time, however, when he turns around when he sees him in a grocery store has Alan grabbing his arm and saying, “No, please. I’d like to be friends, if possible.”

He is  _old_ , John thinks. Mature enough for this, he decides. He nods, though he certainly has no intention of spending any extra time with Alan Deaton.

He doesn’t get his wish.

~~

Slowly but surely, John and Alan become friends again, despite John’s intentions to the contrary.

John doesn’t have the energy to avoid him, not really.

He doesn’t, however, let himself remember what it’s like to love Alan, because that would be too much.

(Later, of course, he accepts that he never forgot.)

~~

“Are you absolutely sure you can’t imagine what kind of animal this could be?” he asks, and Alan shakes his head, and somehow John knows he’s lying—just like he knows that Stiles is keeping things from him, and that the Argents are more than they seem.

“Okay,” John says, clearing his throat. “Thanks for the help.”

John turns to leave, and he’s sure he’s going to, but then, he doesn’t. He turns back around and meets Alan’s eyes. “Why did you—why did you leave, all those years ago? Why didn’t you stay, and fight for us?”

There’s so much distance—physical and emotional—between them that he’s sure that Alan won’t answer his question.

“It was complicated.”

Alan starts to clean up his work area, not meeting John’s eyes in the slightest. “We couldn’t have been together. And I—I had things to do, that couldn’t involve you, that would have been too dangerous, that would have—“

John decides he would have been better off without an explanation, and he shakes his head. “I don’t want to hear that bullshit, Alan.”

~~

_Werewolves_ , he thinks.

Everyone is lying to him—half the damn town, it seems.

The shock of the truth consumes him, and he steels himself for the difficulties ahead, because life is only going to get harder.

“You really are an awful liar, did you know that?” John shows up at the animal clinic with a hurt kitten, and watches as Alan tries to bandage her up, and somehow he can’t help but be aggressive.

“I get the job done,” Alan says softly.

John, at this moment decides he hates Alan.

It’s been years, but for the very first time he  _hates_  him.

“I really hate you.”

Alan looks up at that to see the pained expression on John’s face, “You sound like you mean that.”

“Oh, I do.”

Alan watches as John walks away, and he certainly doesn’t stop him.

~~

“Dad—dad?”

John looks up from his files to see his son fluttering about nervously, like he often does. He’s agitated, clearly, but that’s not new for him. “Yes, son?”

“Remember how I went to that gay club, and you were like ‘You can’t be gay’ and I was like ‘I could be’ because I was trying to cover for all of the freaky werewolf stuff, but you didn’t really believe me anyway?”

John simply blinks and sighs heavily. “Are you telling me that you’re gay?”

Because he’s pretty sure that’s not hereditary.

“No, I’m not. But, uh. I’m dating Danny.”

John raises an eyebrow. “Mahealani? Good kid.”

Stiles smiles brightly, and John  _knows_  that smile. “Be careful, son.”

Stiles starts to bounce around again. “I want to invite him over for dinner, so that you can get to know him.”

John cringes slightly. “How long have you been dating?”

“Six months,” Stiles says guiltily, and John simply nods.

It could be worse, he thinks. “How about Friday?”

Stiles smiles. “Thanks dad. I appreciate it.”

As John watches his son bounce away happily, he realizes that Stiles is really in love with this boy, and somehow it makes his own heart ache.

~~

“I heard your son is dating Danny. Everyone likes Danny, he’s a good kid.” Alan says to him the next time they see each other.

“How did you—oh, Scott?” John nods, of course.

Alan smiles slightly. “They seem happy, even if sometimes it looks like Danny has no idea what’s going on with Stiles, he just sort of smiles and goes with it.”

“I know that feeling,” John reminisces softly, because that’s how it was with them, so many years ago.

Alan’s smile weakens until all that’s left is a frown. “They’re good boys,” he says softly. “Hopefully it’ll work out.”

“It’s not the end of the world if it doesn’t,” John says sharply.

Alan smiles sadly at him. “Of course it is. It always is. But the world can begin anew.”

“Is it the circle of life?” John asks, and Alan laughs.

“Stiles liked The Lion King, didn’t he?”

John smiles back. “He did.”

Suddenly, Alan reaches his hand, placing it on top of John’s, and John simply sighs.

The circle of life, he thinks.

What ends, begins again.

“I’m pretty sure we’re too old for this,” he says softly.

Alan smiles, and John swears they sparkle, and Alan shakes his head. “I don’t think you can ever be too old for this,” he says softly before lifting his hands to the sides of John’s face.

Alan presses his lips to John’s once more, and John tastes the stars again.  
  
~~  
  
Later, much later, John discovers that there's value to apologies, even if they come to late, and that for all that people are capable of great evil, they're capable of great  _good._  
  
And, significantly, he discovers it's never too late to love, to dream, to reach for the stars.


End file.
